


the dark places that lie ahead

by basicallyinstinctive



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-07
Updated: 2013-01-07
Packaged: 2017-11-24 02:53:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/629510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/basicallyinstinctive/pseuds/basicallyinstinctive
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Catelyn comes to terms with what she must do to free Sansa and Arya.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the dark places that lie ahead

The idea had struck her suddenly, sending relief pounding through her heart, revitalizing the childish optimism she vaguely remembered before Winterfell times. When instincts seemed preferable to the cold absolutes of the north.

Ned swung the sword. There was no other way. It was different here in Riverrun, where duty reigned.

Honor was meant for knights and heroes, like him; she was a woman with a woman’s courage, like Brienne said – and bound to a woman’s duty, which went without saying.

The dark no longer frightened her. Cersei Lannister’s aversion to the Winterfell crypts was very possibly their only similarity. For different reasons, but nonetheless, they preferred the light, where they could see. Women rarely could act, and too often, the dark took away their only agency: perception of the world they were bound to.

But descending into the dungeons of Riverrun, Catelyn’s near-blindness was no hindrance. She glided with purpose, as if she were being guided by some unknown force, unblinking, undeterred. He was here, somewhere, swimming in his own shit.

He would do what she wanted, not because he wanted to, but because he was also bound by duty. Duty to less intelligible vices and purposes like incestuous lust and revenge, but duty all the same. He would do it for a price; what price, she could not know. But she would pay it, honor be damned. She was Catelyn Tully now.

\--

She knew she had found him when an imposing silence attacked her from all sides. The kind he thought would give him all the satisfaction, or at least, a mysterious advantage.

He would play the undaunted knight, deft at withstanding solitude and darkness. He would want her to want – no, _need_ – something from him.

_You are no mystery, Kingslayer._

She slid her half-blazing torch into a wooden cradle mounted on the moss-grown stone wall, his view. His matted blonde hair, the beacon of his person, still shone under layers of grease and uncare.

She did not want to meet his eyes. In them, she might see Bran. She was compelled.

“Lady Catelyn,” he thundered, with the voice of a man well nourished, “I see you have grown tired of your cold bed.” He spat. An intelligent man, to drink their wine and water without fear. “At least you have your fingers at night. As for me, I can’t even enjoy my own company.”

He rattled the rusted chains binding his hands. The mute fire danced in his gleaming blue eyes, also unmarred after weeks of imprisonment. “Not that you are even mildly acquainted with your fingers, my lady. Ned was all you ever needed, terrible as the big oaf must have been."

She had expected him to be immediately coarse, unkind, raunchy. A dishonorable man, prone to murder and acts of incest. _The Others take him – once he’s done what I ask._

He was locked in the dark, a victim to it; she was a willing visitor. She had come as an agent of light, to fulfill a woman’s sacred duty. _I must remember that. He cannot hurt me, for I see him and everything that he is._

“Your words mean nothing.” The iron bars still separated them. “I have not come to spar tongues, Jaime Lannister – ”

“I prefer my own sister, but I can’t say I would be completely opposed to the possibility.”

“ – I have come to do you an honorable service, in return for one from you.” Honor, again. She had meant to remind him of his duties and passions; they would fuel him as they had her, but she had been in the Stark world so long, after all.

“I cannot say I will fuck you from the front willingly, but I will assume any other position in which I don't have to see your haggard face.” He grinned. He absolutely shone, down in the despondent deep. “I cannot imagine what other services you believe I would perform for you.”

“Services that would reunite you with the sister you so lovingly speak of.”

He was quiet at that. He wonders what he could have done, where his plans went wrong. He let his overgrown hair sweep over his brow, obscuring the blue. She was mortified to realize the prison felt considerably more morose without the cerulean luster. _Notoriously unnatural, the Lannister blue_ , she heard from the mouths of a few faceless Tullys.

She thought them dangerously beautiful, and wondered how Bran could have not remembered them. How much misfortune that could have saved them, saved Robb, the Seven Kingdoms.

Catelyn flushed, perplexed at her momentary misjudgment of her son. He noticed.

“I hope, for your sake, that you do not hope to trick me. To dangle Cersei in front of me and pull her away is a feat yet unaccomplished by wiser wenches than you.”

“I have a duty.” The word rang strong in her throat, and she knew she was bound to it. “As a mother, to ensure the safety of my children. My girls.”

He reared his head and laughed again, so threateningly, so unlike the men she knew. He had her, he would bind the terms. He, in chains.

“You mean to release me.”

 _I am no mystery, either_ , she mused. So completely a man’s woman, the full-bodied image of the Mother. _Strength of women, help our daughters through this fray…_

Was it her who had led her down her to meet her son’s almost-killer, her son’s enemy, her husband’s hunter? Fear struck her heart. She was meant to make a sacrifice.

“I do,” she said, straightening, taking the form of the wooden Mother she had knelt to as a child. How well the gods and the Tully mantra went together. “You must know my reasons.”

“As you must know mine,” he retorted, interrupted by a hacking cough. “But it just so happens that I’ve become accustomed to these lovely chambers you’ve prepared. I could think of worse fates than waiting here for a while longer, until my father comes and runs blood in your Riverrun.”

Another faraway prisoner echoed his cough as Catelyn’s eyelids flickered in anger. They both knew Tywin Lannister was thousands of leagues away, and a patient man. He would rather rescue his son in a fiery onslaught of well-trained soldiers than risk a more modest and hasty blunder.

But Jaime was nothing if not impatient. He would want to be at the helm, with Cersei anxiously waiting his victorious return and his son sitting safely on the throne. If for no other reason than because please his wanton twin.

Time was ticking for them both, but Catelyn was more apt to admit it. _Soothe the wrath and tame the fury, teach us all a kinder way._

“I come to you as a mother.” Her voice trembled; this would cement her fate, and his leverage. He would now make a choice. “I need my daughters. This war will continue, and you will try to kill him. I will let you go for the sake of them.”

It came off rehearsed. Meanwhile, he was barely listening now that he knew he’d soon be disposed. A deadly combination of days-old drunkenness, a warped understanding of time and place and, of course, the lust usually spurred by his sister, made him swear on his Lannister honor. And propose a bargain – if it could be called that.

“I will require further proof of how duty-bound you are.”

_He full-well knows I am bound in the same chains as he._

\--

He knew her intent; he knew she would do anything. In his realm of morality, duty meant vengeance.

A man who has never been in chains for very long wants swift and unparalleled justice. To wreak havoc on his captor, inspire horror in his opposition. Jaime Lannister was showing signs of wear: he always demanded a mighty competitor, but in this moment of mercilessness, he wanted something delicate to shred.

They would serve a mutual purpose for one another. This was no honorable thing she would commit, but she would remember it as dutiful.

The door to his cell was open, the key to his shackles in her hand. Her wrist grazed the coarse skin of his left hand as the cuffs broke apart – his own wrists cracked as he flexed his arms and let out a sigh, then cracked his knuckles ominously.

She hovered above him, unsure, still poised on one knee, but flinched when he reached up to comb his knotty mane. He turned to her with a devilish smile. _The Stranger_.

Again, she recoiled under her shawl, too sheer to mask her trepidation – now rearing its head because, if for no other reason, he would follow Ned. Thoughts of his touch were constant, but so fleeting she could barely hold onto them. Thoughts of his old gods were even farther away.

“I do not mean to hurt you, Lady Stark,” he said, hissing the name. “If that is what you want, I will oblige, but something tells me you’ll just lay there like a dead Tully fish.”

He began stroking her calf roughly, almost desperately, his eyes traveling over the length of her leg as she remained paralyzed. He wasn’t thinking straight, she realized as he guided her down over his lap, and maybe she wasn’t either, but the hardness of his thick thighs under her stopped the questions.

She smelled the wine on him, and wished she had indulged in a bit of liquid courage herself, still fixated on his tattered grey shirt, but a mother – the Mother – must always have a clear head. Still, even coated in sweat, disheveled and slovenly, his aura overcame her as he stroked the crevice of her upper thigh; she felt her shoulders loosen and fall. He let out a derisive chuckle in her ear, his cock stiffening as the darkness seemed to swell around them, her thoughts of duty dwindling.

He was so practiced, chillingly silent as he worked toward her cunt, so unlike Ned who always neglected the little things. She tried to think of him, picture him in Jaime’s place, but his fingers slid in and she couldn’t. Her mouth betrayed her as she sobbed; her wails rang across the stone walls and he dug in even more, hard and furious, further than Ned had ever gone with his all-too-icy paws. These were warm, built for the sake of fucking and killing – his synonyms.

His britches slid below his erect cock, growing at the sound of her cries. She felt his head brush over her clit as she – she, herself – positioned herself above him; she hated herself, the wetness on her cheeks rivaling that of her throbbing cunt.

There wasn’t supposed to be pleasure in this. The Mother’s pleasure was supposed to be insignificant.

Their eyes met for the first time then. He reeked of boredom and the simple satisfaction that she was already on the brink of an orgasm, and so overwhelmed by him that the Tully adage had long been abandoned for a simpler, more universal one, long forgotten in the absence of her husband’s warmth.

She blinked away tears, drowning in his luminescence, and he whispered in her ear again as she dangled above him, recklessly close –

“I will think of you as Cersei, but you will think of me as Jaime Lannister.”

She choked on her own breath as he forced her down onto him, so suddenly that they moaned in unison, and Catelyn shrieked as he began to thrust. He was meticulously steady, brows furrowed as he grunted and fully entered her, then brushed the head of his cock against her clit, again and again. She was a dead Tully fish, she knew, her sobs turning into moans turning into cries of pain; he was thicker than Ned, so much so that when he filled her at first, she clenched his arm in a single moment of intimacy.

When he rubbed against her clit, her fingers spasmed, and she released him as she finally came, yelping a moan, lamenting her forgotten plan.

He continued chipping away at her, and now that she had her release, she was overcome with guilt; she wanted off, she wanted him dead. He sensed her change of heart and grabbed her ass, choking her cunt on his cock as she pressed against his chest to get off, but she couldn’t match his muscle, no one could.

She knew what he meant to do then, and so she screamed as he smiled soundlessly and jerked once, twice, much harder than before. He would have killed her this way if he could, but he meant to take it all from her, rob her of her Robb and Sansa and the house whose sigil she had missed from faraway…

This would be the ultimate price for yet another of her attempts at Tully independence. He came inside her, frighteningly purposefully, without as much as a grunt.

They heaved together. Her more from fright that felt like asphyxiation rather than the glory of a secret revealed, which took him over. She should have asked the Mother for protection from herself.

The answer was there before he spoke, though it wasn’t a question, and she cringed as her salty tears mingled with the water-stained crevices in the dungeon floor.

“You were never truly a Stark.”


End file.
